NOTES for Co1 1:22-23

In every age of Christian history, missionaries and preachers have tried to answer the question: what prevents people from accepting the message of Christ and the Kingdom? Paul, meanwhile, answers this question briefly but quite concisely and, perhaps, exhaustively. As always, he divides all people into the religious ("Jews") and the secular ("Greeks"), and both have their own reasons for rejecting the witness to Christ and the Kingdom. These reasons are easiest to see if we analyze the attitude of the two named categories of people toward the fact of the Savior's death on the cross. Without speaking of that death, of course, no witness to His resurrection is possible, and therefore no witness to the Kingdom or to Christianity at all is possible.

As we can see, the apostle considers the expectation of signs, "miracles," that would confirm for religious people the truth of the witness they hear to be a distinguishing feature of religious consciousness. In fact, they demanded this kind of sign from the Savior Himself during His earthly ministry. But the signs they expected had to fit the ideas and concepts characteristic of the religious views of those listening. This is exactly the kind of proof many of the Pharisees who listened to Jesus expected from Him: He had to do something that corresponded to their ideas about what the Messiah should be like and how He should behave. Death on a cross, however, in no way corresponded to such ideas, even if one allowed that resurrection followed it. According to the traditional Jewish ideas of that time, and not only that time, the Messiah was supposed to be not a crucified Righteous One, but a triumphant Victor, and moreover a Victor triumphing in our untransformed world, not in some Kingdom "not of this world." Therefore, for the Jews of Gospel times, the messianism of the early Christian Church was something completely unacceptable.

But the Kingdom in general does not fit into any religious framework, and therefore Christianity does not fit into one either. And every religious consciousness, including a "Christian" one, resists the revelation of the Kingdom when it goes beyond that framework, destroying both the framework and religiosity itself. It would seem that secular people should be free from this problem. And they are; but here problems of another kind arise. Every pagan, and "secularity" is nothing other than practical paganism, lives exclusively or primarily according to the laws of the untransformed world. All his psychological and behavioral models, which determine his everyday existence, what is usually called "practical life," and in the Bible the ability to organize everyday practical life is called wisdom, are oriented toward the laws of the untransformed world, not toward the laws of the Kingdom.

This is what usually stops a secular person who hears the witness and begins to think about what he has heard. For him, trying to live according to the laws of the Kingdom is true madness: it is a radical breaking, the destruction of all established and commonly accepted models and ideas, in fact a rejection of the whole former life, and a voluntary rejection at that.

An adventure, an utterly insane adventure. And many pagans, "secular people," refuse any attempt to share in the life of the Kingdom because they are frightened precisely by this seeming madness. As we can see, the reasons religious people and secular people reject the witness are different and unlike one another. But the result is the same: rejection of the Kingdom. And of one's own salvation.

It is hardly possible to give Christ's death on the Cross any more or less coherent and deep rational explanation, because in it we touch the unfathomable mystery of God's mercy. That is why, in the letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul stresses that the efforts of abstract reasoning, however consistent and noncontradictory it may be, cannot explain the Cross.

A rational explanation of this event would make it something that necessarily follows from definite causes, something regular and lawful. But such an explanation is possible only if one looks at the Cross abstractly, from a distance, without discerning the full reality of the sufferings of the Crucified One. For the apostle, however, something else matters: in the Savior's death on the Cross we see the Living God, who surpasses every lawlike necessity.

The Creator of the world does not remain in impassibility beyond the law, as we would say, "beyond good and evil," but comes to suffering humanity. Without changing the course of history, without remaking humanity by mass hypnosis, He tears apart the bonds of logic and necessity. On the Cross we meet not a Lawgiver with whom one can communicate in legal terms of rights, duties, and retribution, but a living Person. The Cross defeats death not because it frees us from its inevitability. But now we are with Jesus, and for that reason alone there is no longer anything to fear.

Thus the crucified Christ is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks”... Could the Almighty Lord really not have found some option that would neither cause offense nor seem foolish? He could have. But He did not look for one. For He did not and never does set Himself the goal of being convenient and comfortable... Yes, He loves humankind, but that does not mean that He ceases to be Himself. He acts within His own laws. And even if it seems that He “is not behaving like God,” in reality He is simply not trying to conform to our notions of what God should be like.

Continuing the conversation about disputes and about what causes them, Paul, of course not by accident, turns to the theme of human wisdom and its limits. For him it is obvious that this wisdom is unable to understand the mystery of the Savior's earthly ministry and His death on the cross (vv. 18-21). Here the apostle remains faithful to the tradition of the "poor," which had taken shape already in the time of the pre-exilic prophets. Judging by the Book of Psalms, even then it had become clear to those seeking full spiritual life and deep relationship with God that human effort alone was not enough to attain righteousness, and that a person who wanted to follow God had to give up the thought of relying only on himself. The seeker could reach what he desired only by surrendering himself completely to God's will. It is no accident that these people began to call themselves "the poor": they understood that before God they were like beggars even when, by the standards of this world, they could be considered wise and rich. They were the ones who awaited the coming of the Messiah and the arrival of the messianic Kingdom more than others; it is precisely such people whom Jesus calls blessed when proclaiming its arrival. But both in the time of the ancient prophets and in the time of Jesus there were people who preferred their own wisdom to the Kingdom. And Paul says directly that trying to understand the mysteries of the Kingdom by human effort alone is useless.

It would seem that there is no need for this, since Jesus Himself revealed them to everyone who wanted to see and hear, to everyone ready to trust Him and follow Him. But only the one who had experienced what the "poor" experienced could do this: the understanding, despite all his wisdom and knowledge, of his complete helplessness in everything concerning the Kingdom, which no one can understand and into which no one can enter unless he is brought in by the One who brought the Kingdom into the world. It is precisely human wisdom that demands signs and proofs even where everything is obvious (vv. 21-24), for such signs and proofs are needed not in order to be convinced of the authenticity of the reality that has opened, but in order to "fit" it into the framework of human logic, coordinating and connecting it with earthly wisdom, which is powerless here. And only to those who have given up such attempts is the path into the Kingdom opened (vv. 26-31). And together with this, the complete meaninglessness of the disputes that divide people in this world becomes clear to them.

"We venerate Your Cross, O Christ..." What do these words mean for us? Boundless compassion for the innocent, beaten, naked righteous one hanging on this wood. Love for Him, limitless gratitude. And also the understanding of how infinitely lighter our own cross is. All the problems that seem impossible to carry are nothing compared with the measure of suffering He took upon Himself for our sake. "You, who so loved Your world..."

And there are other words: "Then He says to the disciple, 'Behold your mother.'" On these words the Church is built, the strongest of strongholds. We have all been made sons and daughters, and therefore we can never be orphans. Orphanhood is a word from some other life. We often enter prayerfully into the Passion of Christ, but it is much harder to enter into the passion of Mary. His inconceivable physical pain and her inconceivable pain of soul. The whole world is embraced by this pain.